Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose raising perch

Jimmy; Article is not going be submitted to Pond Boss Mag. It will be in Farm Pond Harvest Magazine; Fall issue due out in Sept 03. They requested I write a perch raising article for ponds. The current rough draft is way too long and I am waiting for an answer if they want a one or two part article. Story was 3 articles.

When the population increases beyond the original stocked fish, perch can easily decimate a fathead population even with moderate amounts of weed cover. We have seen it happen numerous times. The original complement of stocked fish can decimate fatheads in about 18 to 24 months or less if no weed cover is present. This time frame is variable depending on number of perch and fatheads per acre.

I have seen in a local pond that when the owner transfers fatheads into the pond w/ perch, the perch attack the fatheads like bass. They chase them to the immediate bottom area and dive into short (2"-4") weeds or the sediment to get the fatheads. We have seen 6.5" perch eat a 2.5" fathead which is a good sized adult fathead. Just tonight I had a 5.7" perch eat a 2.6" perch in a bucket. We have found that in small ponds, when the perch grow to 10" to 12" long, they are pretty heavy predators on the YOY perch of 2" - 3" long. Trouble is that most pondowners do a heavy harvest on these big perch and they should be harvesting the 9" to 10.5" ones and allow the bigger ones to stay in the pond as YOY perch predators.

We get the fastest growth by stocking pellet trained perch and feeding them high protein pellets. Perch grow really well this way.

Yellow perch, as with most fish, will stunt at any size. Stunt size is when the food becomes in short suppply. Too many fish not enough food. A fish will grow as long as it lives as long as it has food to excess. Whenever food supply is low growth slows or stops depending on how much food is available. However a fish's eyes continue to grow even in stunded fish. This is how you can tell a fish is stunted; eyes look too big for a fish of that size.